The Landfill Chronicles: Keith Jarrett — New Standards 1999, Chapter 24 Part 2
Dan Ouellette’s The Landfill Chronicles — Pivotal Conversations on Eclectic Music Elevated to a State of Art (the archival conversation memoirs by Dan Ouellette published at Medium)
THE LANDFILL CHRONICLES — Dan Ouellette’s book-in-progress on Medium. The entire book will be available in print in 2024 on Cymbal Press
THE REINVENTIONS OF KEITH JARRETT: NEW STANDARDS TRIO (1999, 2001)
Part 2 of the Keith Jarrett chapter dives into encounters regarding his New Standards Trio in 1999 and later in 2001 (on the occasion of the trio’s 20th anniversary)
PART 1
In my September 1999 DownBeat feature on Keith, he celebrates his trio. “I wasn’t on hiatus. That wasn’t the case because I had to come to terms with the prospect of never playing again. I was too sick to come to terms with anything else.”
STANDARDS TRIO — KEITH JARRETT COUNTS HIS BLESSINGS
In an ego-driven culture, the grace of thanksgiving is rare. Too much gets taken for granted. Joni Mitchell states it well in her poignant pop hit “Big Yellow Taxi” where she laments, “Don’t it always seem to go [that] you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.”
Keith Jarrett can relate. Struck down by Chronic Fatigue Syndrome in the fall of 1996 and confined to the sidelines by the debilitating bacterial disease, the pianist not only canceled all of his engagements but also seriously wondered whether he would ever be able to perform again. “Nobody learns to appreciate that time more than someone who was denied it,” he says about the short intervals of practice he’s only recently been able to handle. “Playing the piano has been my entire life.”
It’s difficult to imagine the dynamo at the keys stilled. One of jazz’s most athletic pianists, Keith’s concerts are unforgettable visual experiences. Case in point: the latest Standards Trio video, Keith Jarrett/Gary Peacock/Jack DeJohnette Tokyo 1996, on RCA/BMG Video (a companion to last year’s scintillating ECM recording). Recorded a few months before Keith fell ill, the video captures him soaring in ecstasy, restlessly throwing his entire body into improvisational torrents. In sync with the music, he stands, crouches, bends his knees, tucks his head close to the keys, swivels his hips and sprawls elastically across the keyboard.
“It’s hard for me to remember playing that way since I got sick,” Keith says with a laugh shortly before traveling to the West Coast to perform trio dates in Los Angeles and San Francisco. “I don’t have as much to throw into it. I have to limit myself to the keyboard a little more these days.” He pauses, then adds, “Well, if I’m not really active on one number, that means I’m saving the jumping for the next.”
Nearly four years since his last appearance in San Francisco, Keith took the stage at the sold-out Masonic Auditorium — only the third time he appeared in concert since contracting CFS — and it was quickly evident he was keeping the physicality of his performance in check. Instead of vigorously surrendering to the music as he did on his last visit, Keith, dressed head-to-toe in black, except for a white and black print vest, proceeded at a subdued pace, hunching over the keyboard, leaning back as if steering the notes into shape and a little later crouching as if ready to pounce.
It was the first concert of the San Francisco Jazz Festival’s Swing Into Spring series, and while Keith’s flamboyance was noticeably lacking, his engagement with the music was incandescent.
The ensemble interplay was especially entrancing as the trio members listened attentively, making eye contact and grinning with delight throughout the show (with bassist Gary Peacock and drummer Jack DeJohnette at one point even slapping hands after a delicious, lightly swinging number that made the house erupt with applause). It was a textbook display of intuitive musicmaking, the kind of seamless improvisation only possible when bandmates are tuned into the same wavelength (the three have been playing together since 1983, making it one of the most stable — and popular — combos in jazz).
Contorting his face and squinting his eyes at junctures of intensity, Keith uttered his trademark aaahhs of satisfaction. He embarked on mesmerizing journeys while the rhythm team offered currents of support. The trio played into the heart of such ballads as “Night And Day” and “My Funny Valentine” (the latter the first of two encores) and roused the house with several upbeat bop tunes, including Tadd Dameron’s “Hot House” and two Charlie Parker classics “Billie’s Bounce” and “Scrapple From The Apple.” It was a triumphant show, the strongest of Keith’s three shows thus far, according to his manager Stephen Cloud, and far more spirited than one might have expected given his near brush with retirement.
“It felt like forced cessation,” says the 53-year-old Keith in reflecting on his sickness that kept him largely bound to his rural New Jersey house for over two years.
“I wasn’t on hiatus,” he says. “That wasn’t the case because I had to come to terms with the prospect of never playing again. I was too sick to come to terms with anything else. A year and a half ago I’d go look at my pianos and think, yes, they’re still here. Then I’d leave the room. I thought if you can’t play, you can’t play. I was not going to try to compete with myself after my lobotomy.”
Hyperbole? Keith’s not joking. “No one knows how debilitating this sickness is unless they have it,” he says. “It’s like if you get migraines, someone may say, oh, I get headaches so I know what’s it like. But you can’t imagine how bad they are unless you’ve had a migraine yourself. But this is a much more horrible disease.” So, it’s more than just being tired or burned out, a common perception? Are you kidding? I’ve met people who have had it for 10 years, 25 years. Some are bedridden, some can’t walk across the street. It’s stupid to call it Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. It should be called the Forever Dead Syndrome.”
Keith contracted his illness in the fall of 1996 while touring in Europe. He was suddenly overcome by such a profound sense of fatigue that he told his wife he felt like aliens had invaded his body. He realized several months later that’s precisely what happened because CFS is caused by an airborne parasite. Back home, Keith heard about a doctor who was conducting a study, treating the disease aggressively as a bacterial infection and claiming to reverse the symptoms in a relatively short time — meaning a couple of years.
“I’ve undergone an overwhelming amount of aggressive medication, vitamins and nutritional supplements, and I have been getting better slowly,” says Keith, who actually sounds energized talking about his ordeal. “But slow is slow. The problem with this disease is that theoretically the parasite attacks cells when they’re producing energy. In essence they rob the fuel of healthy cells, then infect them. As a result, any expenditure of energy makes you feel horrible. It’s a total breakdown of all your bodily systems. It was hard for me to come downstairs once a day for breakfast. As for music, it got to a point where I didn’t even like it. My body was telling me that I couldn’t even listen to music if I wanted to maintain at least some level of health.”
Easier said than done for someone whose whole life has been at the keys. A child prodigy on the piano at age three, Keith gave his first full-length recital when he was seven and toured as a classical pianist throughout his youth. In his late teens he was offered a scholarship to study with Nadia Boulanger, but instead opted to briefly attend Berklee College of Music before moving to New York in 1964. Keith began his jazz tour of duty with Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers in 1965, then a few months later joined Charles Lloyd’s quartet for several years. He also joined Miles Davis in his early electric jazz projects.
Keith launched his solo career in the early ’70s and immediately became a hit thanks to his lyrical pianistic approach. Since that time he has focused his attention on performing solo (both jazz and classical), with classical orchestras and in the Standards Trio with Gary and Jack. They’ve recorded over a dozen projects together, including a six-CD set Keith Jarrett at the Blue Note: The Complete Recordings, which won the 1996 Down Beat Critic’s Poll as album of the year.
It’s significant that Gary and Jack were on stage with him when Keith made his first concert appearance in two years at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark in November 1998. “I couldn’t have done it without Gary and Jack,” he says. “There are no better people to be on stage with. But knowing about my condition, they were both concerned I might push too hard. There’s a low ceiling as to what you can do. If you hit the ceiling, you can have a relapse. The problem is you don’t know where that ceiling is until it’s too late. That’s when you get hammered again.”
That’s what happened late last summer when Keith and his trio mates met together for the first time in a couple years to rehearse for an October date in Chicago. It proved to be too taxing for him, so he was forced to cancel the engagement.
As for the Newark concert, Keith expresses ambivalence. “The show came off really well considering I wasn’t fully ready to play. I wish more of me could have been at that concert, but the music itself was great.”
Even though Keith knew he wasn’t in his prime, he was champing at the bit to get back in action. “I heard this story about a race car driver who had a bad accident,” he says. “As he was recovering, people kept asking him when he was going to race again. He said, not until he was 110 per cent. For the last two years I’ve been mulling that over. I knew he was right, that I’d want to be in better shape, but I also realized I was getting older every year. That’s why I decided to jump back in prematurely. All the shows I have set up for the near future are based on the hope that I can do more each time.”
After the San Francisco date, Keith was taking a break and then heading to Italy to test his endurance further by performing two solo dates, including one at La Scala in Milan. In June the trio is scheduled to perform at the Verona Jazz Festival (with perhaps a couple other European dates rounding out the micro-tour), and more solo shows in Japan are on tap for September. All are subject to cancellation should Keith’s health suddenly deteriorate again. “Nine months ago, there was no way I was even thinking about setting up concerts. Let’s just say that right now I’m cautiously optimistic.”
During our conversation, Keith pops a pill and tells how he’s met several people who also have chronic fatigue syndrome. After an article in the New York Times last fall, he was flooded with inquiries about his condition. (A similar phenomenon happened after I wrote a profile on him for the San Francisco Chronicle.) “People thank me for being so willing to talk about what I’ve gone through. They don’t feel so alone.”
So, is Keith ready to be the poster boy for CFS? Hardly. At one point, he interrupts and asks if we can talk about music instead of what’s been eating away at his energy reserves the past two years. But he quickly backs off, “Well, that is the biggest part of my story now.” But he sounds like he’d be happy to have this plague behind him and get back to the simple pleasure of playing the piano again.
In the first few months under the spell of CFS, Keith discovered that any activity drained him, even listening to music. “I got to a point where I was asking myself what the hell is music? I stopped listening completely. If you can imagine that what makes you feel the happiest can make you sick, that’s what my life was about.”
As he began the long, drawn-out process of recovery, Keith dipped his toes into music by listening to his most recent recordings. He wasn’t pleased. “When you think you may never play again, the flaws are magnified tremendously,” he says. “One of the things that jumped out at me was my long solo introductions. Critics used to write about how self-indulgent they were. Self-indulgent? Yep, you’re right. And my solo albums. What the hell was I doing for 45 minutes playing solo? So, I had to start from zero. I felt the need to reinvent myself again. I didn’t like what I had already recorded.”
Was that true across the board? He pauses, then laughs, “Well, not everything. One of my favorites is Book of Ways, which I feel was underexposed. That one is special to me. But, hey, it’s all in the past as far as I’m concerned. All those albums were recordings I made when I was younger.”
So, in some ways, this forced sabbatical is similar to his self-imposed withdrawal from the music world in 1985. Back then, it was a crisis time that forced him to reflect more deeply on his musical vision. Keith returned to action with the cathartic recording Spirits.
Is there anything in his CFS experience that sheds such a positive light? “A lot of good things have come out of having this disease, but none that are expressible in art,” he says. “Basically, it strips you to the bare bone, to a place where you have nothing to express. You find out what life is about and that is survival. That’s a good thing to learn because it’s true. Plus, if I had been gigging all the time, I’d have never had the time to notice what I didn’t like about my playing and make changes.”
The new Keith is basically the old Keith with slightly different inflections. For example, he says his voice is much more tuned in to bebop now than it was before. He began to move in this direction around the time of the Tokyo 1996 concert. “I’ve been trying to free up my left hand to play like the middle bop period where much of the real stuff of modern jazz was born,” he says. “I’m adding in these little jagged things with my left hand that might get in Gary’s way more. I’m trying to pay tribute to the bop-era pianists in every tune I play.”
Keith chafes when asked who specifically he’s paying tribute to. Still, upon a little prodding he responds. Bud Powell? “Well, if I had to name someone, sure,” he says. “But I also think of Lennie Tristano even though I hate the way he played right on the beat all the time. But basically, I’m trying to hear the history of jazz as well as play into the future while playing the stupidest standard tunes. If that helps some people understand why Gary, Jack and I have a zillion recordings of standards, then good. All three of us love melody and don’t like playing clever.”
Obviously taking pleasure in being agitated into a feisty state, Keith asserts his opinions on the new generation of jazzers. In a nut shell, he doesn’t like the posturing. Not enough of the youngsters, he contends, really know how to listen. “I’m talking about listening in a humble way, hearing where the music is coming from,” he says. “This is a paraphrase, but there’s a saying that goes something like, if you want to emulate a wise man, don’t do what he does, figure out where he’s come from.”
Not only is a knowledge of history important, but Keith insists that a love of the music should be the foundation upon which an artist builds. It sounds simple. But, he sniffs disapprovingly, “Too many guys, whether they have something to say or not, are doing it because it’s hip. In the past, musicians had to struggle to make it. It was hard. That’s what caused drug and alcohol problems. Today, youngsters have the history behind them and the media helping them out. Success means making money, not having something important to express. All you have to do is look at album covers and see the faces of these young guys to see that they’re posing.”
Keith shakes his head and brings up his friend saxophonist Dewey Redman. “Not too long ago I saw Dewey and he was wondering out loud if he really had a voice,” he says. “Can you believe that? He said, ‘What’s happening, man? I’m Joshua Redman’s father now.’ That’s how it’s perceived. I told him that of course he had a voice. He said, ‘You really think so?’ Dewey’s trying to see straight, but it’s so easy to be convinced by the rest of the world that you’re not seeing anything at all.”
Having been so sick and having to consider the very real possibility of a relapse, Keith counts his blessings. He’s content working with the trio and prepared to resign himself to never writing any new material again. “It’s too much to think about right now,” he says. “If I write something that requires rehearsals, well, that’s way in the future because of the energy it requires. It really doesn’t matter if I ever do anything new again because the act of making music is so important. If I’m able to only do that a few times, I won’t ask for more.”
Even having this conversation six months ago would have been impossible, he says. It wouldn’t have lasted longer than five minutes. So, Keith’s slowly on the mend. But he’s cautious. “The parasite isn’t gone.,” he says. “These days I’m thankful if I can practice a half hour in the morning and then another half hour later in the day. I’m testing my limits and hoping I won’t overdo it. It’s pretty scary because I could wake up tomorrow and say, oops. But so far so good.”
PART 2
KEITH FULLY RECOVERS (WITH STANDARDS TRIO, 2001)
“We will be releasing more of this kind of thing in the near future, and it will be even more radical.”
Sad reality: cars equipped with manual transmissions are headed for extinction. They’re already becoming increasingly rare. According to auto sales records, 12.3 percent of vehicles sold in 1996 had stick shifts. That figure dropped to 8 percent in 2000. Writing about this phenomenon in a recent editorial on sfgate.com’s The Morning Fix, Mark Morford opines that we have a “cultural aversion to…engaging in anything that requires practice or patience.” He adds, “The demise of the clutch is where the convenience impulse meets the laziness impulse meets technology’s nasty habit of doing everything for you…Make no mistake, we are losing something profound with the clutch’s passing…What we’re losing is ‘feel,’ that almost intangible thing that lets us know we’re in control, that we still have some tiny degree of autonomy…”
What does this have to do with jazz and, in particular, with pianist Keith Jarrett’s new CD, Inside Out, a brilliant live outing with his longtime Standards Trio cohorts, Gary Peacock and Jack? Well, there’s not a drop of automatic jazz transmission fluid in the new album recorded at the Royal Festival Hall in London in July 2000. Inside Out is a small miracle in today’s jazz land where market “wisdom” too often trumps creative impulse and expression, where “catching a groove” sometimes means “cruising on auto pilot.”
Technique is a must in jazz; mechanical performance is deadly. Even a lot of today’s improvisation sounds canned (read: pre-constructed solos practiced ad nauseum before studio time), not extemporaneous (created on the spot sans preconception).
Catching Keith, Gary and Jack live is a treat because they are so creatively present tense. They call themselves the Standards Trio because they primarily exercise their imaginations on tried-and-true songs. However, they also work like a standard car transmission — driving with the full awareness of the unexpected twists and turns on the road ahead (on steer alert every moment) and with the engaged physicality that optimum performance requires (downshifting, upshifting tempos).
That’s the way Keith and co. navigated the music at this year’s JVC Jazz Festival in New York in a sublime performance at Carnegie Hall. With Keith’s sparkle on the keys, Gary’s subtle acoustic bass lines and Jack’s understated yet muscular drumming, the trio offered a jazz poetry of clarity and joy — so captivating that the house stood and brought the band out for three encores. But my memory of the two-set show is how the three played with such a radiant communal appreciation of each other’s contributions. The show was one of the best instances of trio togetherness that I’ve witnessed.
On Inside Out, that co-operative spirit is delightfully captured, especially the leader’s orgasmic ahhhh’s and ooooh’s expressed while creating spontaneous art with the rhythm team. It’s as if Keith himself is simultaneously in awe and charmed by the notes he plays. Like all of his trio CDs, there are moments of lyricism, passion, fun, transcendence. But unlike any of his previous Standards Trio outings, there is only one chestnut in the five-piece collection: the end song “When I Fall in Love,” composed by Edward Heyman and Victor Young. All the other tunes are experiments in free improvisation where the only material is that which Keith, Gary and Jack collectively dreamed up onstage. It’s this daring excursion into the unknown that makes Inside Out arguably the pianist’s most adventurous sojourn. As he states in the CD’s liner notes, “Inside Out means…bringing something pure out from the inside, at the spur of the moment.”
Free improv is a dangerous jazz sport where hang-gliding musicians can come crashing to earth in a moment’s notice. But with the trio’s history of performing together as simpatico musical partners, the results here are magical: 78 minutes and no dull moments. The first three cuts clock in on the average at 20 minutes. Each number has movements — not in the classical music sense, but in the literal sense as Keith, Gary and Jack open up new passageways as they perform. This is journey music.
“From the Body” opens with Keith doodling on a playful melodic phrase, moves into a flurry of keyboard statements and searching notes bolstered by Gary’s heartbeat pulse and Jack’s rolls and tumbles. It ends beautifully with a lingering meditation. The title track starts with an active sensibility, quiets with a hymn-like calm, then develops into a blues and excites with Keith’s ecstasies on the keys.
The genesis of “341 Free Fade” is Gary’s song-like solo that Keith and Jack join with plinks and rim shots. Later the drums click and clack while piano and bass play out with hide-and-seek frolic. The hard-driving “Riot” fades in for six intense minutes, part romp, part intrigue. The full 30-minute piece wouldn’t have fit on the CD, so the climatic section is the take. (One wonders if someday we’ll get to hear the full version?) The CD closes on a graceful note as the trio muses on “When I Fall in Love.”
As noted above, Inside Out flies in the face of automatics. It’s a three-on-the-floor masterpiece. So, what next for Keith and trio? Again from the liners, the pianist gives a clue: “We will be releasing more of this kind of thing in the near future, and it will be even more ‘radical.’”
PART 3 coming
The Trio in 2008